For the cleaning of fabric articles consumers currently have the choice of conventional laundry cleaning or dry cleaning.
Conventional laundry cleaning is carried out with relatively large amounts of water, typically in a washing machine at the consumer's home, or in a dedicated place such as a coin laundry. Although washing machines and laundry detergents have become quite sophisticated, the conventional laundry process still exposes the fabric articles to a risk of dye transfer and shrinkage. Significant portions of fabric articles used by consumers are not suitable for cleaning in a conventional laundry process. Even fabric articles that are considered “washing machine safe” frequently come out of the laundry process badly wrinkled and require ironing.
Dry cleaning processes rely on non-aqueous solvents for cleaning. By avoiding water these processes minimize the risk of shrinkage and wrinkling, however, cleaning of soils, particularly water-based and alcohol-based soils is very limited with these processes. Typically, the dry-cleaner removes such soils by hand prior to the dry-cleaning process. These methods are complex, requiring a wide range of compositions to address the variety of stains encountered, very labor intensive and often result in some localized damage to the treated article.
Accordingly there is an unmet need, in commercial laundry, in dry-cleaning and in the home, for cleaning compositions, which simultaneously provide acceptable cleaning across a variety of soils while remaining safe for a wide range of fabric articles.
Silicone-containing polymers functionalized with hydrogen bonding substituent groups selected from the group consisting of polyols, polyamines, and/or alkanolamines aid soil removal for washing processes using lipophilic fluids, especially decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (known as “D5”), and formulation of products for use therein.